Unpacking Luther’s Baggage, chapter 2, page 3

There are two Messianic organizations that I have great respect for and which I have followed for many years: First Fruits of Zion (www.ffoz.org) and Tikkun International (www.tikkunministries.org). I learned about FFOZ through a friend in the early 90’s and soon began receiving their magazine which went through various name changes: It began as First Fruits of Zion, and then after FFOZ moved to Israel, the name was changed to Bikurei Tziyon (which is First Fruits of Zion in Hebrew), and finally settled on Messiah magazine. They have since supplemented that with a great publication called Messiah Journal. 

FFOZ was started by Boaz Michael and his wife Amber in Denver, Colorado. They were soon joined by Ariel and D’vorah Berkowitz, Tim Hegg, D. Thomas Lancaster, and others who wrote ground breaking books on the subject of the Torah and its relationship to believers in Yeshua. I attended the Jars of Clay seminar in Toledo, Ohio in 1997 where I first got to meet Boaz, Ariel, and D’vorah. I was later able to go to Norfolk, Virginia in 1999 to see Ariel and D’vorah do another seminar at the Old Dominion University. It was evident from the start that this group was special and that they were doing some exciting research in important but controversial subjects. I still remember quite vividly when Boaz talked to us at the Jars of Clay seminar. In a very humble way he said that they were not going to use words like “should” and “must” when it came to obeying the commandments. It is rather like a child who complains to their parents on Sunday morning: “why do we have to go to church?” and the parent says in reply, “we don’t have to go; we are blessed because we get to go to church.” 

One of the core products of their ministry is called Torah Club. Essentially it is the kind of Bible Study that Jesus would have gone though every week of his life. For over 2000 years on any given week, Jewish families throughout the world read the same Torah portion and selected verses from the prophets and then discuss what they have read. The goal is to read from Genesis through Deuteronomy in one year. Torah Club provides a commentary (usually 15-20 pages) written by FFOZ that provides incredible insight from rabbinic and other sources on the Torah portion and on the New Testament. FFOZ has 5 volumes of commentaries (one for each year) that provide a different emphasis on the Torah portions. My wife Rita and I are just about to start our third year going through the newly rewritten Torah Club Volume 3. The study is held at Mars Hill church in Grandville, Michigan. When the Jewish new year starts in October, our Torah Club study group will meet to discuss the weekly portion, the commentary, and our answers to the questions at the end of the commentary. I plan on summarizing the discussion and content that comes out of our group’s meeting in this blog. But I digress...

FFOZ has from the very beginning grappled with the relationship of the Torah to the New Testament believer. If you were to go through every book of the Bible, from Genesis through Revelation and gave a thumbs up or a thumbs down judgement on whether or not the book has a positive opinion about God’s commandments, you would have 66 Yes votes. The longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119, uses an acrostic technique to pile up statement after statement that praises God’s commandments. This song of praise for the Torah rises to this great crescendo in book after book and then seemingly stalls at Acts 15. What gives? FFOZ has just explained this dilemma through a masterfully written 24 page article called “One Law” and the Messianic Gentile. I promise (Lord willing) that I'll summarize the article at the next post...

Unpacking Luther’s Baggage, Chapter 2

The contraband that I am thinking of in Luther’s legacy is the animosity of all things Jewish that permeated Catholic teaching and would later express itself as replacement theology. Just as the children of Israel had been in Egyptian bondage for 430 years, so Protestantism would lie in ignorance of their Jewish heritage between the time Luther wrote his treatise “On the Jews and their Lies” in 1543 until the Jesus People movement brought this error to light 430 years later. And how did they do that?

This hippie flavored movement of the 1970's brought thousands of young people into the church. Among this group were many Jewish high school and college students who discovered Jesus. As they circulated within the churches they began to realize that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah who was actually named Yeshua, and his story was written by Jews in a Jewish context. They studied the texts in the original languages, and in the process, found that the Bible had often been misunderstood and misinterpreted by Gentile Christians. They compared the Bible’s teaching with the church’s traditions and decided that it was better to fellowship with others who taught the whole Word. And so they began Messianic synagogues and developed their own music and worship. Their level of scholarship and discoveries created a mountain of evidence that was getting hard to ignore.

Soon Gentile members of these evangelical churches began reading Messianic books, attending Messianic conferences and services, and studying the Torah with its Biblical calendar. When they mentioned these things in their churches, they were generally ignored or marginalized. In frustration, some joined the Messianic gatherings as well.

Most evangelicals believe that their doctrinal tenets paint a faithful picture of New Testament Christianity. And it certainly is closer to the truth than what is found in Roman Catholicism. But the baggage that Luther inherited dated back only to the 4th century; by then much had changed since the first century. For its first ten years, the Church in the book of Acts was almost entirely Jewish; after Acts 10, Gentiles began to come in, first in trickles and then with a flood, but it was under the tutelage of the Jewish leadership. When Paul returned to Jerusalem after his second missionary journey, he was greeted by James with these words:

"You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Torah.” Acts 21:20 ''

This period was a golden age that would never be repeated again.  The Jewish community, as well as the Messianic believers, had good relations with the God fearers and new converts from paganism. The only Bible they had was the Tanakh (Torah, Prophets, and Writings), with a few apostolic writings here and there. The commandments were respected by the Ecclesia and served as the foundation for its development, as the following quotes testify: 

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. 1 John 5:2-3

“This is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it.” 2 John 1:6

Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. Rev. 22:14

Given these positive statements, it is hard to understand why the church became so negative on the subject of God’s commandments. The average Evangelical church is ignorant of the Jewishness of Jesus, the Torah, and Israel while the Messianic synagogue is on the other end of the spectrum. I would like to look at this dichotomy and see if there is a middle ground between these two camps. In a way, I’d like to return to Acts 15 and see how Paul bridged the gap between Messianic Judaism and the new church that was full of Gentiles who had just come out of paganism.